Blacks, Whites and New South

Richard Jensen

Sumter 2008

Blacks as 2nd Class Citizens

• Loss of Political Power

• Segregation• Poor services

(schools)• Sharecroppers• Some Farm Owners• Leaders: ministers &

teachers

After Reconstruction

• 1872: “Liberal Republicans” revolt • Populist revolt of poor white farmers fails (1890-

96)• PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) Segregation

ok’d by Supreme Court Disfranchisement (1890s)

• Lynchings & racial violence (1890-1920)• NAACP formed (1906)

Heroic Image of KKK in “Birth of a Nation” movie 1913

Modernizers wanted to bring industry to South

Geography- 1

• RURAL South

• “black belt”

• Cotton

• Also tobacco

Cotton Belt = Black Belt

Black Belt 1910

Then: Picking cotton by hand

Then: farmers bring in cotton crop

Today: machines do the work

South Carolina today

• Only 900 cotton farms left in the state• 2006 2 million jobs in SC:

– Factories: 260,000 (including 28,000 in textile mills)– Construction: 123,000– Stores 370,000– Education & health: 290,000– Tourism 205,000– Government 334,000– Unemplyed 140,000– recent Statistics

Tobacco Too

Moonshine & Lawlessness

Baptist & Methodist Churches Grow

Conditions in 1900

• Most blacks in rural South– Segregation– Jim Crow– Most in poverty, but making gains– Education: little– Voting: no in deep South; yes in North; yes in

border states– Lynchings and threats

Blacks as 2nd Class Citizens

• Loss of Political Power

• Segregation• Poor services

(schools)• Sharecroppers• Some Farm Owners• Leaders: ministers &

teachers

Terminology: contested

• Colored (19c)– people of color (1980- )

• Negro (1910-1960)• “niggra” (polite South before 1960)

• Black (1960- )

• African-American (1980- )

• N-Word (very nasty term)

South, 1865-1940: Parallel Social Structure

• White South• upper class

• middle class• Farm owner

• working class

• tenants/ croppers

• Black South• upper class

• middle class• Farm owner

• working class

• tenants/ croppers

• underclass

Religious Structure

• Very high religiosity• 65% Baptist, 20% Methodist

– Also Catholic, Fundamentalist, Muslim

• own [segregated] churches• dominant ministers

– Adam Clayton Powell (1950s)– M L King (1960s)

• Blacks as Christlike victims– Must redeem whites from racism

Segregation Era 1880-1964

• Exclusion from power & prestige

• Segregation: De Facto & De Jure

– Supreme Court approves: Plessy v Ferguson, 1896

– schools, churches, jobs– GEOGRAPHICAL: “BLACK BELT” IN So,

cities

• Politics: Age of White Supremacy– Disfranchisement, 1890-1915– Lynchings during transition

• Economic Status: very poor

Disfranchisement 1890-1965

• The attack: Blacks political corrupt; never learned republicanism; system must be purified

• Defense: racism is even worse form of corruption

• Result: blacks lose vote in deep South (1890-1965)

Lynching

White Views 1890-1930

• Black and Tans– continue interracial coalition

• Neo-Abolitionists– war not over till blacks get equality

• Paternalists– Blacks need education & economic

independence before vote

• White Supremacists– zero toleration of black power

Black Leadership Disputes 1890-1930• Booker T. Washington,

political leader– Atlanta speech, 1896 = accept

segregation– Tuskegee Institute & industrial

education– Work with T Roosevelt, Carnegie

• W.E.B. DuBois--intellectual leader; NAACP– equality; liberal arts for “talented

tenth”

• Marcus Garvey: Black Nationalism, 1920s

W E B DuBois

Marcus Garvey & Back to Africa 1920

Drafted into Army World War I

Migration: out of rural South